“That’s your opinion. It isn’t mine. I’m not staying here, Shipperton, and when I get back I’m going to clean this whole stinking mess out,” I said grimly.
“Oh, shit,” said Shipperton, shaking his head. “I was wrong. You’re not just a wimp. You’re a wimp that wants to be a hero.”
The reflexes of my mouth started opening it to respond to that, but then my forebrain took over.
I closed my mouth again. I didn’t like what he said. But I had heard things like that before. The macho things I’d spent so much time doing, the hang-gliding, the muscle-building, the jogging, the marathon runs—for that matter, the recent half-witted attempt to break in on Henry Davidson-Jones in his hotel—I was acting out some kind of Clint Eastwood make-my-day fantasy. So Marlene had told me very kindly, and others less so, and what they were saying was that I was overcompensating for my unfortunate inability to prong the pretty ladies anymore.
So I didn’t answer him. I just scowled. I didn’t pursue the subject, and he didn’t care about the scowl.
“That’s better,” he said again, and his face fell. “Oh, hell,” he said. “Now what?”
I said, almost apologetically, “I just can’t believe all this.” My tone must have struck him as plaintive, rather than belligerent, because he asked, quite tolerantly, “What can’t you believe?”
“I can’t believe that all these trillions of—well, people— all these incredibly advanced alien interstellar races spend all their time watching some human being play piano.”
“Oh, grow up, Nolly! Most of them never heard of us. Most of the ones that have don’t care. Look. Back home you had a nice little business handling taxes, right? But how many people ever heard of you? Well, it’s the same thing here, proportionately. Narabedla’s just another nice little business, and the word to remember is ‘little.’ There are three or four other undeveloped planets, like the Earth, that provide entertainers and commodities and things; we’re tiny.”
“All right,” I said unwillingly, “but why entertainers?”
“Who else would be worth bringing in?”
“I don’t know. Scientists?”
“Human scientists? Stennis,” he said sorrowfully, “you just haven’t grasped the picture, have you? We don’t have any scientists, by their standards. Maybe in another hundred years—” He closed his mouth on the end of the sentence. I pressed. “What were you saying?”
“Just that maybe in a hundred years,” he said reluctantly, “could be a thousand, maybe we’ll grow up enough so we can join. Maybe not, too. They’ve had some bad experiences. Anyway, I don’t expect to live to see it, and the way you’re going you won’t even come close. Now, do you want to hear what’s going to happen or not? There’s always the alternative of slow-down if you’d rather.”
“I’ll listen,” I said glumly.
“Thought you would. So, first, we have to talk to Barak. Who knows? It might work out, and it’d be better for you than trying to find some other way for you to pay your way here. We already have plenty of singers.”
“And an orchestra?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, grinning. “You want to know about the orchestra. I keep forgetting you’re new here. Come on, we’ll take a go-box to Barak’s place and we’ll meet the orchestra there.”
It turned out that a “go-box” was one of those things that looked on the inside like a little elevator, and on the outside like a comfort station in a public park. When the door closed behind us Shipperton said, “Barak,” and turned to me. “The go-boxes go anywhere on Narabedla, but you have to have authorization to go to the alien parts. You don’t have it. The thing’s got a record of every human voice on Narabedla, so it’ll know who you are. It just won’t accept an unauthorized command from you. Barak’s part of Narabedla’s off-limits for you, except when you’re escorted. Like with me now. You follow? You get in the go-box, you say where you want to go. You can go all over the human quarters on Narabedla, nobody will bother you, but that’s all. You know what Narabedla is?”
“Somebody said it was the second moon of the seventh planet of the star Aldebaran.”
“Yeah, but it’s been remodeled a lot. It’s your home base. There’s four hundred human artists, all based here—didn’t Norah Platt tell you all this?”
“Some of it.”
“Well, the rest you’ll pick up as you go along. We’re here. Don’t worry if some of the natives look, uh, funny. They won’t hurt you. I mean, unless you do something to them first.”
I didn’t get a chance to see how funny the natives looked right away, because Barak’s house was only a step from the go-box entrance and we didn’t run into any natives. What 1 did find funny was how I felt. I’d been aware that my step had been springier than usual all morning, but now it was positively buoyant. I felt as though I’d lost fifty pounds in thirty seconds. When I said something to Shipperton he said, “You have. We’re four levels up. A lot less gravity here. Come on, here’s the place.”
Barak’s house wasn’t a house like any of the ones I’d seen in the human quarter. None of the structures on this level looked even a little bit normal. The thing Barak lived in was a featureless, floor-to-ceiling prism of milky green glass. You couldn’t see inside it, but a section of the angle split open when Shipperton stopped in front of it and pronounced Barak’s name again.
There was a sound of piano music from inside. I hesitated.
Not long; Shipperton grabbed my arm to hustle me in—just in time, because the green-glass doors clicked shut about two inches behind my feet. It was a pity that they closed so fast. They cut us off from the outside air, and, oh my God, Barak’s place stank. Years ago I dated a woman who kept five cats and lived in a one and a half room apartment. The aroma that came from Barak’s room took me right back to the last time she’d failed to change the kitty litter.
That was the first thing that threatened to turn my stomach. The second was Barak himself. Barak was the source of both the music and the smell. He sat on a plump pillow in the middle of a sort of diamond-shaped room that was surrounded on all four walls by heavy, lustrous drapes. There were pillows scattered around a glassy tile floor, and a fountain was playing. The sound of the fountain was nice, and so was the piano that tinkled behind it, but they didn’t help the stink. Barak himself was about the size of a collie, if you can imagine a collie shaped more or less like a starfish. Two of his arms were picking out a tune on a piano keyboard by his pillow—the music-lover at home, whiling away the moments as he waited for his guests to arrive—and four or five of his eyes swiveled toward us as we came in. Shipperton had seriously understated the case. Barak didn’t look just funny. He looked really, truly, bizarrely weird. “Come-in-come-in,” he said, in a voice that burped out the words like a series of farts, and lifted his body off the pillow on the other four of his legs so I could get a good look at him.
I think he did that on purpose. I think Barak was vain of the way he looked.
It takes all kinds to make up a universe. Maybe if I’d been Barak, or a female of Barak’s species, I would have thought him pretty handsome, too. I wasn’t. I didn’t. I thought he looked awful. More than anything else he resembled a sixlegged starfish who had been chrome-plated. All the “arms” (or “legs”—Barak didn’t seem to make any distinction) ended in little clusters of pulpy digits; those were what he had been playing the showier parts of Chopin’s “Fantasie-Impromptu” with. The bottom part of the body wasn’t shiny; it was hairy and not at all well kept—in fact, it was where most of the smell seemed to come from. It struck me that that was the bodily part that civilized people, or even beings, generally kept covered up. Barak didn’t, and it didn’t seem to bother him any more than the smell did.
“Sit-down,” he belched invitingly. Shipperton picked a pillow for himself and pointed one out to me. There was something familiar about the way Barak spoke, and after a moment I figured out what it was. I’d had a voice coach who’d suffered from cancer of the larynx.
As long as it was just bad he still managed to croak out scales and show me intonation. Then he had the whole larynx out. When I saw him after that he’d given up coaching. He had to. He’d had to learn to talk all over again, sort of burping out words in clusters. It was not a pleasing sound.
Neither was Barak’s voice when he introduced himself. “Nolly-Stennis,” he coughed, “my-name-is-Barak. You-once-were … Barak-too. Is-that-correct?”
I started to deny it, since I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about, but Shipperton hissed, “Say yes. I think he’s talking about some role in an opera.”
Light dawned. “Oh, the role,” I said, trying to remember all the parts I’d ever sung. Then it clicked. “You mean, like, I sang the role of Barak once? The servant in the Busoni Turandot?”
He waved a couple of arms affirmatively. “You-were-Barak-yes?”
“Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, I guess I was.” I reflected for a moment; it wasn’t quite true. I decided to tell the truth, if only to show this weirdo that Narabedla’s information agencies didn’t always get the facts straight. “I did contract to sing the role, yes. I rehearsed it, and I was all ready to perform, but then I got sick.” I hesitated a moment, then decided to try a joke—not one that I really thought very funny. “After that I would have been better cast as Truffaldino.”
I could see from Shipperton’s scowl that I had lost him.
Barak protested, “No-no-voice-is-wrong.” Then the starfish thought for a moment, while the six limbs stirred restlessly, then they folded themselves into what I took to be the equivalent of a nod. Barak laughed—I think—and said, “Ha-ha-ha-ha. Now-see-your-point. Understand. Lost-your-balls.” Even a dozen years after the fact, even when it was a silver-plated starfish that put it that way, I found myself flushing. It was bad enough to have to say such things to myself. Hearing them from somebody else was really nasty. But I only said, “That’s approximately what I meant.”
The starfish explained it to Shipperton. “Truffaldino … chief-eunuch-in-opera. Understand!” The punctuated voice sounded almost enthusiastic. “Is-good-joke-you-make. Is-good-thing-to-hear. You-understand … Shipperton?” He didn’t wait for Shipperton to answer. He burped on, “Is-interesting … human-societal … document-opera. You-Knollwood! Wish-to-know-all … strange-sexual … questions-raised. Turandot! Her-male-parent … order-sex-with-stranger. She-not-want. She-rather-die. Is-possible-so?”
Shipperton gave me a warning look. “As you can see, Barak is very interested in human social customs, as well as our music.”
“I can see that,” I said. The look in his eye told me I should take this dumb conversation seriously, so I thought for a moment before I added carefully, “Of course, operas are not exactly realistic depictions of life, Barak. But that particular element of the plot is, yes, based on things that have sometimes happened with human beings. Both men and women sometimes have been known to commit suicide for love, either because they were forced to, ah, have sex with somebody they didn’t want to, or because they couldn’t do it with somebody they did want.”
“Fantastic!” burped the starfish.
Shipperton nodded approval. I hesitated for a moment, then offered, “But, look, Barak. That’s not really a very good opera, you know. I mean, hardly anybody does it anymore; the only Turandot you ever hear in the major houses is Puccini’s.”
“Makes-no-difference!” Barak was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at me—that is, that’s what I thought he was doing with most of those eyes, which were as featureless as a lobster’s. Then he suddenly changed the subject. “ Okay-you-sing-now. ”
I said, “I beg your pardon?”
“You-sing-now! What-role-you-know?”
“Sing something,” Shipperton hissed uneasily.
I hissed back, “But you said I stank.”
“Do it.”
There was no point in getting huffy, and the surroundings weren’t right for starting an argument. So I said, “Well, I suppose I could—not any of the Barak arias, I’m afraid; I don’t remember them at all—”
Barak’s burps began to sound irritated. “Sing-some-damn-warhorse! Know-Pagliacci-prologo?”
“Well, sure, everybody knows that. I suppose I could manage that, if I had some kind of accompaniment—” Barak waved an arm to shut me up. Without raising his voice he belched out an order: “Purry-you-come.”
The drapes against the wall rippled, and through them a sort of sweet-potato-shaped creature came rolling and skipping into the room.
Purry was, maybe, even stranger looking than Barak, though that’s a close call. Purry was about the same size as Barak, and it did (or he did) have short legs along the bottom of its (or his) body. He (or it) also had perforations all over the surface of its body, each cavity equipped with a set of muscles like lips or—well, like some other kind of orifice muscles worse than lips. Although it had warm puppy eyes, they were not attached to a head of any kind that I could detect, but that didn’t keep it from speaking. “Here I am, Barak,” it said in beautiful, golden tones that seemed to come from the holes in its skin. “Hello, Mr. Shipperton. Hello, Mr. Stennis. I’m Purry. I’ll be your orchestra. Would you like me to play something?”
“Pagliacci-prologo,” Barak commanded—and instantly out of that little creature began to come a volume of sound I would not have believed possible.
An orchestra? You bet Purry was an orchestra. Not just your skimpy thirty-piece opera bunch, either, but what sounded like the Chicago Symphony or the New York Philharmonic with all the seats in the pit filled, all ready for Mahler. It began:
“Dum dee-dum, dum … deedle-eedle-eedle-ee …”
It was the opening notes of the introduction to the Pagliacci prologue, as fine as I’d ever heard it played. I could make out every instrument, all from that one ocarina-shaped body that pulsed and swelled as it puffed air through all its holes.
Thank heaven, there are several bars of the introduction before the baritone has to come in. It gave me a chance to get my wits together, if not my voice. So when my cue came I was right there. There was a bad moment when I took a deep breath for the opening and almost strangled on that Parisian-pissoir stink that had hit me when I first entered the room, but I recovered and sang out:
Si puo! Si puo.
Signori! Signore!
Scusatemi, se solo mi presento …
And so on right to the end of the aria. It certainly wasn’t the best performance of my life. But for somebody who didn’t really have much of a voice left I belted it out pretty good, even hitting real close to that hard A-flat near the end that gives everybody trouble. I almost expected applause when I finished.
I didn’t get any. Barak was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Purry-go-now. Shipperton-wait-outside.”
Shipperton just got up and left. The little ocarina said politely, “Thank you, Barak. So long, Mr. Stennis; see you later. You were great!”
But I knew that wasn’t true, and I hadn’t heard from the impresario himself. I never waited for the next morning’s reviews with more impatience than I waited to hear what that shiny starfish thought of my singing.
I never did hear that. After a silent moment, his arms writhing and his eyes wandering all over the room, all he pumped out was, “I-want-to-give-you … fatherly-advice.”
That took me aback, because for a moment there I had almost forgotten about Marlene and Irene and Narabedla and the fact that the genius I was singing for was only a stinking starfish. I had almost felt like a real singer again.
Barak brought me down. I waited for the “fatherly advice” without joy. I’d never had much satisfaction out of it from my own father, and didn’t expect any from a starfish.
I was right. He flailed three or four arms in my general direction. “Knollwood-Stennis!” he blatted. “You-live-by-rules-here!”
I said, “I beg your pardon? What rules are you talking about?”
“Rules-of-behavior! You-talk-go-home … okay-no-crime
. But-you-hurt-somebody … you-get-hurt-back! You-kill-you-die! Not-counting-servants-of-course. Now-you-go!”
CHAPTER
12
When I was twelve years old some foreign traveler landed at Kennedy Airport from Pakistan or Bolivia or somewhere, and changed my life. The man got as far as the Immigrations desk. Then he keeled over in a faint. He turned out to have smallpox, and the whole city panicked.
My mother was the most panicky of all. Not for herself. For me. She was not about to let these diseased foreigners kill her kid with their nasty epidemics, so she not only got me vaccinated that very day, she packed me off the next week, sore arm and all, to a place called Camp Fire Place Lodge for the rest of the summer. Remember, I was twelve. I’d never been away from home before. It was already August. I didn’t know a single boy in the camp, whereas all the boys there had already had a month and a half to get to know each other. So they weren’t just other kids to me. They were a single monolithic mass called The Campers, and for the first teary forty-eight hours of my stay at Camp Fire Place Lodge I saw them as only interchangeable units of Camperishness.
Narabedla was not much different.
Forget about the aliens. Of course, they were a whole separate problem, and completely indecipherable at first, but that wasn’t surprising. Unfortunately it wasn’t just the aliens. Even the human people all blurred into each other. I could identify a few individuals. Norah Platt was my first accompanist. Sam Shipperton was the guy who ordered me around. Malcolm Porchester was Tricia Madigan’s lover, and Tricia, of course, was Tricia. These four had traits I could hold on to and recognize; but all the rest were, basically, The Narabedlans. I did run into a few of them as I moved about. A few actually spoke to me in passing; but which who looked how and had said what was beyond my powers of retention.
It stood to reason, I told myself, that all these people were still people. Individuals. Some would be as content to stay here as Sam Shipperton. Others wouldn’t.